Establishing a Database Session

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Establishing a Database Session

Users can connect to Greenplum Database using a PostgreSQL-compatible client
program, such as psql. Users and administrators always connect to
Greenplum Database through the master; the segments cannot accept
client connections.

In order to establish a connection to the Greenplum Database master, you will
need to know the following connection information and configure your client program
accordingly.

Table 1. Connection Parameters

Connection Parameter

Description

Environment Variable

Application name

The application name that is connecting to the database. The
default value, held in the application_name connection
parameter is psql.

$PGAPPNAME

Database name

The name of the database to which you want to connect. For a
newly initialized system, use the template1 database to
connect for the first time.

$PGDATABASE

Host name

The host name of the Greenplum Database
master. The default host is the local host.

$PGHOST

Port

The port number that the Greenplum Database
master instance is running on. The default is 5432.

$PGPORT

User name

The database user (role) name to connect as. This is not
necessarily the same as your OS user name. Check with your Greenplum administrator if you are not sure what you
database user name is. Note that every Greenplum Database system
has one superuser account that is created automatically at initialization time.
This account has the same name as the OS name of the user who initialized the
Greenplum system (typically
gpadmin).